The Night Alphabet: the electrifying debut novel from the award-winning poet

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A Guardian Book of the Year 2024

'A glorious jewel of a novel' Sophie Ward

'Exhilarating, profoundly beautiful and exquisitely written' Salena Godden

'A mesmerising debut from one of the most talented literary stylists writing today' The Bookseller

'Hugely imaginative' Marie Claire (Best New Books, 2024)

'It's hard to think of many books more restlessly inventive' Guardian (Book of the Day)

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Hackney, 2233: a woman walks into a tattoo parlour. Jones' body is covered in tattoos but she wants to add one final inking to her gallery - a thin line of ink that connects the haunting images of her body art together, creating a unique and mysterious map.

As the two tattoo artists set to work, Jones tells them the story behind each tattoo. As Jones is no ordinary woman, these are no ordinary stories: each one represents a doorway to a life Jones fell into, a 'remembering'.

Set across geographies and time-spans, The Night Alphabet is a deep and bold investigation into violence, resilience and women's stories.

Reviews

The Night Alphabet is a glorious jewel of a novel, rich with language and story, that glows in your mind's eye long after you have set it down. Taylor manages to combine her vivid poetry with a truly engaging tale of female resilience, an Illustrated Woman for our times. -- Sophie Ward, author of Love and Other Thought Experiments
Joelle Taylor's debut novel The Night Alphabet is phenomenal. This book is exhilarating, profoundly beautiful and exquisitely written, it is poetic, empowered, courageous. The Night Alphabet is an inspired piece of truly magical and brilliant story telling. -- Salena Godden
A mesmerising debut from one of the most talented literary stylists writing today. * The Bookseller *
This hugely imaginative debut by TS Elliott-prizewinning poet Taylor pulls no punches... a fierce, tender - at times highly uncomfortable - study of power, agency and resilience. * Marie Claire (Best New Books, 2024) *
Exquisitely written . . . Joelle Taylor reveals herself as an extraordinary storyteller. * The Skinny *
Unsurprisingly, Joelle's lyrical prose is utterly dazzling and her imagination is highly original, resulting in an arresting, absorbing book that will stay with you long after you put it down. Both bold and brilliant. * DIVA *

Ooof. This story. Hackney, 2233. A dystopian tale untangled through tattoos. Joelle's writing, as with her poetry
recitals, feels so physical, and leaves me breathless.

-- Hollie McNish
Exceedingly well written -- The Spectator (Book of the Year 2024)
It's hard to think of many books more restlessly inventive * Guardian (Book of the Day) *
Joelle Taylor brings extraordinary linguistic inventiveness to a tale of tattoo artists and violence against women. * The Guardian (Fiction Books of the Year 2024) *

Author Bio

Joelle Taylor is a queer, working class author of six plays and four collections of poetry, most recently C+nto & Othered Poems, winner of the 2022 T. S. Eliot Prize for Poetry. A former UK poetry slam champion, Joelle founded the national youth slam championships, SLAMbassadors. Joelle has lead workshops and residences in schools, prisons, youth centres, refugee groups and many other settings for organisations including the Poetry Society, the British Council, the Arvon Foundation and English PEN. She has received a Changemaker Award from the Southbank Centre, a fellowship of the RSA, is co-curator and host of Out-Spoken Live (a live poetry and music night currently resident at the Southbank Centre) and is the commissioning editor at Out-Spoken Press. She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2022.